Monthly Archives: March 2014

Last year (or possibly longer) I endeavored to write a sequel to Madame Bluestocking’s Penny Horrid. I’ve been working steadily on it since, but I’ve come to a startling discovery: I need to back it up again.

Now I’m starting work on the REAL Book 2 and the current Book 2 will later become Book 3.

This seems to be a big dumb thing with me, where as I start to write a book there seems to be a smaller less fleshed out book hiding in the first chapter. This is exactly what happened to the Linus Saga which has been delayed while Book 3 became Book 4 and Book 3 had to be written again.

Okay, so bottom line is that there is new stuff involved. And it will be totally awesome. It’s just going to be a bit longer than I wanted. And the bright side is that the NEXT next book will be done that much sooner.

It’s up there on most authors’ “worst questions to be asked,” right up there with, “so do you have a real job?”

“Where do you get your ideas?”

When it comes to simply, “where does our mind fly off to to fetch ideas about worlds that don’t exist and people who aren’t real?” A person might as well ask, “what magical leprechaun visited you in your sleep and poured whimsical brain dust into your head holes to give you your ideas?”

How do I answer that? There’s no magic rite, no ceremonial dance, no burnt offerings. It’s just there, unbidden, and NEVER on call when I need it. No one really knows where it comes from. I sure don’t. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to because imagination is a terrifying and amazing place.

Usually, though, people are expecting a concrete idea. Like “when I work out,” or “when I was in Mexico for a year,” or “while the doctor was shaving me for my hernia operation,” and that leads to more embarrassing situations for me.

That’s the other thing authors won’t tell you about writing.

Most of us get about 70% our ideas while we’re in the room with the sink.

That’s my Victorian version of “we’re on the can.”

The porcelain throne, usually around 3 am, devoid of phones and shampoo bottles to read, barely awake and still half dreaming, I seem to get most of my ideas. Sometimes I luck out and I get ideas in the shower, but it would appear that my muse is a stoned college student who hangs out in bathrooms in weird hours and says, “hey…. hey… hey…hey… I got an idea…. hey… this is great…. dude… dude… You should TOTALLY do a bit in your book… where Linus has no pants.” It then dissolves into giggles and goes to the kitchen for grape soda and cold macaroni salad.

Yup. That’s how the magic happens folks. Oh what glamorous lives we lead.

One pitfall if being a writer and artist is the fact that all of those things are done sitting down for hours at a time.In may case I don’t even have a desk. I have a laptop stand by a couch. So I complete all my tasks like a lounging Roman hedonist, in various states of boneless reclining. So one of the things on my HabitRPG checklist is to get up an exercise.

So today I’m going to try out some of the workouts I found on Neila Rey’s site Like this one here.

Neila Rey has unlocked the key to getting me off my tuckus, which is appealing to my romantic sense of Fantasy and Heroism. And the best part is that it’s all free! Neila is only accepting gifts from enthusiasts so please consider donating.

Save Middle Earth? Fight with the Free Peoples? Hold the line while Frodo destroys the One Ring? OH HELLS YES.Granted some of the moves a little hard-core for my marshmallowy body and old-lady knees so I’m going with my limits currently and doing softer versions of some of the ones listed here. Once I stop wheezing after step one I hope to do the full on version one day.

I decided that Wed. posts will focus on the characters of my novels and maybe illuminating them a little more for everyone. So to kick off our first CHARACTER WEDNESDAY here is:

VILORI REAGAN

We first meet Vilori in Runs In Good Condition. He’s a 200-year-old curmudgeonly Elf on Linus’s campaign staff. He doesn’t like Linus much at first and will continue to call him a “thundering moron.” He was a Ranger back in his younger days and one of the first members of the original Rangers Union. He’s married and has two grownup children that we’ve never met.

Some things we don’t know:

*Vilori had a very sheltered youth and wasn’t even allowed off the family estate until he was fifty years old.

*He created the first “desk job” for Rangers solely so he could spend his days indoors and so he had an excuse to leave home every day.

*Vilori did most of his early work with a Human man named Harcourt, his best friend. When Harcourt grew old and passed away a lot of Vilori’s love for the job died too.

Vilori’s story will become further entangled in Linus’ as it progresses. Keep reading for more info and I hope you like this new feature.

If you have any further questions about Vilori, please post them in the comments!

It’s a free ap that you can use from your desktop or on your Droid or iPhone. It’s a time-organizer/to-do list that tries to instill the fun of an RPG game into mundane drudgery. The concept being that you create your own list of daily chores (doing a load of laundry, working on writing), good habits (Exercising, wearing a bra), bad habits (eating junk food, smoking), and terrible tasks (Clean out the fridge, clean the bedroom). By doing good tasks and finishing chores, you earn points and XP and help your party. By dong BAD tasks or failing to perform tasks, your party will take damage and fail their mission. (Example below taken from Habit RPG bf site).

Now we all know I’m a fantasy nut and I’ve also been on a decade+ long struggle to try and get healthy, so this might actually help me in being more productive and getting more of my assignments done in a timely fashion.

Set-up was less than 20 minutes and so far it’s been kind of fun! Now I just need to get a party and I can go fight stuff.

So we’ll see how this goes. I’m SmokingRanger if you want to connect! And may the chores be with you!

Here’s where I get all whiny so you can skip this if you want to. But I felt that I had to post SOMETHING after all this radio silence.

Still more snow, still more snow days (with more on the way—what the what??) and my patience and work schedule has been worn down to a thin veneer. And then my computer dies— like holy crap for reals dead. I’ve lost a ton of work and a lot of art and I’m kicking myself because this whole winter I’ve just felt lost in time. So up to now, I’ve only been playing catch up.

I’m still not caught up but it’s time to just gird my loins, or light this candle, or truck this penguin (or whatever) and move ahead with my life.

So what’s next? That’s where my trouble starts.

Ever seen a dog whose people tease it by throwing several sticks for it at once? That whining sound as they stay put, trying to figure out what to do first and whether they’ve already lost this game? That’s me right now. Too many sticks, too many first steps, and an overwhelming fear of choosing the wrong one.

I’ll figure it out eventually. Whether it’s more editing, more writing, more art, more project ideas, more promo-ing, more posts on this blog, I don’t know. I’m just going to have to start and get a-moving. And I’m not going to worry about the stuff I should have done, or everything else I should be doing.